Scott Neuman

Scott Neuman works as a Digital News writer and editor, handling breaking news and feature stories for NPR.org. Occasionally he can be heard on-air reporting on stories for Newscasts and has done several radio features since he joined NPR in April 2007, as an editor on the Continuous News Desk.

Neuman brings to NPR years of experience as an editor and reporter at a variety of news organizations and based all over the world. For three years in Bangkok, Thailand, he served as an Associated Press Asia-Pacific desk editor. From 2000-2004, Neuman worked as a Hong Kong-based Asia editor and correspondent for The Wall Street Journal. He spent the previous two years as the international desk editor at the AP, while living in New York.

As the United Press International's New Delhi-based correspondent and bureau chief, Neuman covered South Asia from 1995-1997. He worked for two years before that as a freelance radio reporter in India, filing stories for NPR, PRI and the Canadian Broadcasting System. In 1991, Neuman was a reporter at NPR Member station WILL in Champaign-Urbana, IL. He started his career working for two years as the operations director and classical music host at NPR member station WNIU/WNIJ in DeKalb/Rockford, IL.

Reporting from Pakistan immediately following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Neuman was part of the team that earned the Pulitzer Prize awarded to The Wall Street Journal for overall coverage of 9/11 and the aftermath. Neuman shared in several awards won by AP for coverage of the December 2004 Asian tsunami.

A graduate from Purdue University, Neuman earned a Bachelor's degree in communications and electronic journalism.

IBM says it has overcome a technological hurdle by producing a prototype chip with transistors that are just 7 nanometers wide, or about 1/10,000th the width of a human hair. The smallest transistors currently in use are twice as big.

The breakthrough occurred at SUNY Polytechnic Institute's Colleges of Nanoscale Science and Engineering. It could result in the ability to place 20 billion transistors on a chip the size of a fingernail.

Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States and its five negotiating partners working to hammer out a deal to curb Iran's nuclear program "will not rush and ... will not be rushed" into a deal.

He said that "despite all of the progress" made at the negotiating table, key issues remain unresolved.

"If in the end we are able to reach a deal, it has to be one that can stand the test of time," he said.

All Things Considered, NPR's flagship evening news program, is expanding its lineup of hosts: Ari Shapiro and Kelly McEvers will join veterans Robert Siegel and Audie Cornish on weekdays, and Michel Martin will become the new host of the weekend show.

The U.N. estimates that more than 4 million Syrians have fled the country since the start of the civil war there four years ago, making it the worst refugee crisis in a quarter century.

The Office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees says the total number of refugees that have left Syria could be more than 4.25 million by the end of the year. An additional 7.6 million people are internally displaced.

Nguyen Phu Trong — the head of Vietnam's communist party and one of most powerful figures in the Southeast Asian nation — will meet with President Obama on Tuesday for a historic meeting aimed at strengthening ties between the two nations.

The 71-year-old party secretary said Friday that he hopes to build trust between Washington and Hanoi 20 years after President Bill Clinton normalized diplomatic ties and four decades after the end of the Vietnam War.

Secretary of State John Kerry says the United States is ready to walk away from the negotiating table if Tehran is unwilling to make the "hard choices" necessary to achieve a deal with the West on limiting its nuclear program.

However, Kerry also said that he and his Iranian counterpart, Mohammad Javad Zarif, were making "genuine progress" on "several of the most difficult issues" that remain to be resolved.

China's central bank will provide an injection of cash for the state-run margin finance company, as the country's top brokerages pledge to go on a share-buying spree to prop up faltering markets that have lost a third of their value in less than a month.

The International Space Station has just received a much-needed delivery, including some groceries, aboard a Russian capsule that successfully docked after three previous attempts to resupply the orbiting laboratory had failed.

Greek Finance Minister Yanis Varoufakis has resigned. According to The Associated Press: Varoufakis was told shortly after the Greek referendum result that the some eurozone finance ministers and Greece's other creditors would prefer he not attend the ministers' meetings. He issued an announcement on Monday saying the prime minister had judged that his resignation "might help achieve a deal" and that he was leaving the finance ministry for this reason.

Sixty-two dogs (and buns) after sitting down for the annual Nathan's Famous Hot Dog Eating Contest, Matt Stonie had snatched the title from "Jaws" Chestnut, the reigning eight-time champ, in a competition held each July 4 for nearly a century at New York's Coney Island.

Stonie finished second last year but says he'd been training hard for the rematch. Ultimately, he beat Chestnut by two hot dogs. Coincidentally, both men are from San Jose, Calif.

The Associated Press says: "Afterward, Stonie, holding his fist in the air in victory, said it felt amazing to win."

More than a week after a deadly attack by an Islamic extremist at a Tunisian beachfront resort that killed 38 foreign tourists, the president of the North African country has declared a state of emergency.

President Beji Caid Essebsi's office says in a statement that he needed the powers that come with the declaration to more effectively deal with the threat from extremists.

Greece's finance minister has accused his nation's creditors of "terrorism" for trying to "instill fear in people" ahead of a referendum on whether to accept the harsh terms of an international bailout designed to keep Athens in the eurozone.

Yanis Varoufakis, in an interview with the Spanish daily El Mundo, said that there was too much at stake for his country to be kicked out of Europe's common currency — "as much for Greece as for Europe, I'm sure."

Iceland's minority Pirate Party has its first major legislative victory — repealing a 75-year-old blasphemy law that made it a crime to "ridicule or insult" the teachings of a legally recognized religious community.

In what could prove the largest-ever merger in the insurance industry, Aetna has announced a $37 billion deal to acquire rival Humana.

The agreement, announced by the Hartford, Conn.-based Aetna, "would bolster Aetna's presence in the state- and federally funded Medicaid program and Tricare coverage for military personnel and their families," according to The Associated Press.

Greece's prime minister has put his political clout behind the "no" camp in a referendum to decide whether the country should accept the terms of an international bailout. But the people appear to be evenly split on the issue, according to two new opinion polls.

One survey, conducted by the respected ALCO institute just 48 hours before the referendum that could decide Greece's economic fate and future in the eurozone, gives the "yes" camp 44.8 percent against 43.4 percent for the "no" side, according to Reuters.

A Russian rocket filled with much-needed supplies for the International Space Station lifted off from a pad in Kazakhstan early today after two previous re-supply missions failed.

NPR's Corey Flintoff reports that the successful launch of the Russian Soyuz spacecraft, known as the Progress 60P, which is set to dock with the station on Sunday, was a relief to the astronauts and cosmonauts on the space station.

The self-declared Islamic State has released photos purportedly of its fighters destroying an ancient artifact in the Syrian city of Palmyra weeks after the Islamist extremists captured the city.

A "priceless" 2,000-year-old statue of a lion dating from the city's Roman heritage is seen being smashed in what Syrian antiquities director Maamoun Abdelkarim tells Agence-France Press is "the most serious crime [ISIS has] committed against Palmyra's heritage."

Former U.S. Sen. Jim Webb has become the fifth Democrat to announce he is seeking the party's nomination for president.

"[Our] country needs a fresh approach to solving the problems that confront us and too often unnecessarily divide us," Webb said in a statement. "We need to shake the hold of these shadow elites on our political process."

An unmanned SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket experienced what the private space launch company calls "some type of anomaly in first-stage flight" about two and a half minutes into its flight.

NASA commentator George Diller confirmed that "the vehicle has broken up."

Pieces could be seen raining down on the Atlantic Ocean over the rocket's intended trajectory. More than 5,200 pounds of cargo, including the first docking port designed for NASA's next-generation crew capsule, were aboard.

The suicide bomber who attacked a Shiite mosque in Kuwait last week, killing 27 people, was a Saudi national who flew into the neighboring Gulf nation hours before carrying out his deadly mission, Kuwaiti officials say. The self-declared Islamic State later claimed responsibility for the attack.

Greece's Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras announced Sunday that banks will be closed and capital controls imposed in order to stave off a run on the euro after negotiations with the country's international lenders broke down.

He said the Athens stock market would also be closed.

However, Tsipras blamed the European Central Bank for the latest crisis after it decided not to increase the amount of emergency liquidity amid a run on the banks that saw people lined up at ATMs, many of which ran dry amid the onslaught.

Police in France are questioning a suspect they believe was responsible for an explosion and the beheading of a man at a factory near Lyon on Friday. Officials reportedly say he took a "selfie" with the slain victim — his boss at the plant — and sent it to an unidentified Canadian mobile phone number.

A day after Richard Matt, one of two escaped inmates from a prison in upstate New York was shot and killed by police, a weeks-long manhunt, which has yet to track down accomplice David Sweat, has gone into overdrive. Helicopters, search dogs and hundreds of officers are scouring an area about 30 miles away from the Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora.